A painting by Jean Cousin at TEFAF ?

12/3/26 - Art market and heritage - Maastricht fair - As in every edition of TEFAF, numerous paintings from France will be unveiled by participants of the Dutch fair, often arousing legitimate desires — and above all regrets — among French institutions. Accustomed to this sad observation (see the article), we can only hope not to have to repeat it for the 2026 edition opening this Thursday, where the announced presence of an important French Renaissance painting is already exciting all specialists. The matter will not surprise last year’s visitors, who were able to admire at Caretto & Occhinegro a Entombment by Maarten van Heemskerck quickly acquired by the Worcester Museum of Art, which reconstructed a triptych (see the news item of 3/6/25). This year, however, it is this Pentecost attributed to Jean Cousin the Elder (ill. 1) that is likely to spark the interest of collectors and, hopefully, museums.

Paradoxically, it comes from there, as it belonged to the collections of the Bob Jones University Museum in Greenville, South Carolina, before being auctioned in New York in January 2003. Formerly attributed to the Liège painter Lambert Lombard, it aroused — twenty years later — the interest of the actors in the research program of the University of Geneva "Painting in France during the Renaissance". Placed under the aegis of Frédéric Elsig, this generated an impressive number of conferences and especially publications (see the article), one of the most recent being Peindre à Paris aux XVe-XVIe siècles, where The Pentecost reappeared, attributed to the workshop of Jean Cousin the Elder. Unfortunately, much about this key figure of the French Renaissance remains unknown, beginning with biographical details: he is believed to have been born around 1503 and to have died…